The forces of nonbeing love that I was lied to all my life

Satan! Beavers! Spiritual companionship!

A lot of my work as a gay lady priest was translation—of old, patriarchal, coopted by White Christian imperialist, scripture and tradition—back into (forward into) a living, vital vision. I was helped by attending a seminary that had a strong African American tradition and presence, a growing Korean-born student body, and a rabbi on faculty. I told her (Rabbi Dr. Rachel Mikva) that learning from her was like learning I had been lied to all of my Christian life. And I didn’t want to perpetuate those lies once I was in the pulpit.

My aunties gave me that stole. It was made by gay Episcopalians.

One of the stories I preached about annually was that of Jesus going from the human-built environment and into a wilderness, just as the self-liberating slaves and Moses and then Elijah did before him. Wilderness in the Bible is where all of the good stuff happens because out on the land we cannot rely on our false narratives of how we have made the world; we are confronted by the raw truth of our vulnerability and interdependence.

In this particular wilderness story Jesus is confronted with three opportunities to betray his faith and commitments. Those opportunities, framed as temptations, are given by what Christian translations of the word call Satan. So, capital S devil guy. Going deeper into our inherited/stolen Hebrew tradition, a better understanding is hasatan, a kind of function or role in the cosmos rather than a full character. In order to really distance the word from Christian imagination, I started calling that character in the story “the forces of nonbeing.” The forces of nonbeing tried to persuade Jesus to ignore the laws of physics, claim a regal role, and betray the good neighbor promises of the ten invitations.

Obviously, those forces of nonbeing are alive and well in houses of power and the internet to this day.

But will they survive what they have set in motion: The end of a planet habitable for humans?

My dad (R) and his dad in a desert east of Los Angeles in the 1960s. I doubt there is still so much plant life now. Not with all of the drought and aquifer depletion.

In a book I am studying with The BTS Center, Speak with the Earth and It Will Teach You (Pilgrim Press, 2022), author Daniel Cooperrider encourages the reader to bring the more-than-human world back into Christian awareness of the divine. He makes a strong case about early Christian thinkers insisting that there is no Word/word separate from caterpillar and wind. But for all the reasons that institutions like to control, the Roman and Protestant traditions benefited from our alienation from soil and snow and our own mammalian reality. And now the forces of nonbeing may successfully end our being altogether.

Jesus modeled staying true to core values when confronted with ends. I think my work is a little different: I need to encounter our shared core. I need to learn to read the fields and voles with as much attention and passion as I once did the written Word. I need to become converted by the quails that I hear but never see and the masses of cabbage white butterflies clinging to the narrow strips of undeveloped land around my neighborhood farms each summer. I need to begin to translate the depth and breadth of life around me into the choices I make with my small allotment of days and years.

Maggie Bixby in Iowa with a tree felled by the neighbor beavers on our land.

In the coming months I will get to co-teach a class with The BTS Center about poetry and prophecy. I think we are going to talk about the prophetic imagination and the three urgent prophetic tasks, per Walter Brueggemann: naming reality, expressing grief, and embracing hope (and not the sunshine denial kind). We will not, as I always say to participants in my group spiritual companioning around climate change, solve climate collapse. I do believe, though, we will take one more step away from the systems and institutions that profit from lies and ecological disconnect. I believe we will take one more step toward where the good stuff happens, a rewilding of our lives and our living.

+ + + + + +

Walking the Wild Edges

Group Spiritual Accompaniment for Challenging Times

March–October 2026 • Various days and times available • Online

We live in and love a broken and beautiful world, and we are not meant to carry that love alone. We find ourselves at the edges of systems—religious, political, and ecological—that are beleaguered but could be lifegiving. Walking these wild edges, we find like-spirited seekers, and together we hold the big questions of vocation, calling, and journey.

Learn more and register here: https://thebtscenter.org/wildedges-2026/